green

 

Mama saw that I-gotta-have-it look in Sister’s eyes. She took her aside and reminded her about all the wonderful presents she had gotten on her last birthday. But Sister didn’t hear a word Mama said. She just stared at that big, beautiful bike with the hand brake and the super-sport wheels. “Oh, dear,” said Mama. “I think you’ve been taken over by the green-eyed monster.”

                                          ~ The Berenstain Bears and the Green-Eyed Monster

 

I have this sense of longing

Hunger? 

Yearning?

Grasping?

I miss the time with the girls

The lazy time in Maine that felt like it wasn’t going to end

Or at least not imminently

The glorious illusion of infinity

The waking up together

The knowing that we have a whole other day

And then another and another

To be together

To just be

To do

Whatever – anything – nothing – everything

To not be apart

Wrenchingly apart

I love that everyone has their daytime lives

Darby has her wonderful day camp and ice skating and the kinetic, beautiful energy of being Darby

Kendall is back to the blessed routine of school and all of the people who adore and nurture and most importantly TEACH her

And Matt has the formidable business of running the house and managing our lives, being father (and sometime stand-in mother) and teacher and husband (and fill-in wife) and doing so much more than I am capable of giving him credit for

And I leave at 6:30 and I know I know that I miss far less than I think I do

But I miss them

And then I come home and I spend the short time left in the day trying too hard to squeeze it all in

To find them again

I crouch and wait and let Kendall come to me

While I want to swallow her whole

And I miss them still

I beg Darby for the morsels of her day, her experience, her

And I get cranky and short with them

And it kills me

And I put them to bed still missing them

Missing them more

Darby sits right next to me and says, ‘I need you’

I didn’t always understand what that means

I’d say, ‘I’m right here’ as if it were enough

But now I do

Now I say, ‘I need you too, baby’

I’m glad that we all can do what we do

I know full well that the grass is always greener on the other side

But every once in a while it looks as lush as a damn rain forest